“Well, sir. Well, ma’am—‘kind enquiries,’ eh? Come to see how the poor old man is faring after his fall?”
“Yes! We wanted to know. We thought it would be polite, as we were the un—er—unwitting causers of your accident.”
Jill brought out the right word with fine effect, whereupon the General made great play with his outstanding tufts of eyebrow, pretending to frown, and look ferocious.
“Un—witting, indeed! If that is your idea of unwitting, I should like to know how you would define deliberate intent! I’ll forgive you this time, but let me catch you at any of your tricks again, and the fat will be in the fire! Sit down—sit down. It’s not often an old bachelor like myself has the honour of entertaining a young lady visitor. No man has had better friends, or more of them, than Terence Digby, but there are precious few remaining nowadays. I’ve left them behind me in many a lonely grave, without a stick or stone to show the resting-place of some of the bravest fellows the world has ever known. It’s lonely work to outlive one’s best friends.”
“Have you been in many wars, sir?” asked Jack, quick to scent a story of adventure. He dropped his hat on the floor and wriggled back in his chair, the rebellious locks of hair which his sisters christened “Cetewayo,” after the Zulu chief, sticking up rampantly at the back of his head. “Have you been in any real, proper wars?”
“I should think I have, sir. Many wars, and tough and serious wars at that, though a whipper-snapper like you would not know their names, and the English newspapers sandwich the news of them in a corner—with a small headline of ‘Border War.’ It’s the Border Wars which keep the Empire together, let me tell you, sir—the Border Wars which entail the most self-sacrificing and thankless work. There’s no honour and glory about them. The people you are fighting for don’t even take the trouble to find out where you are, or what the trouble is about. Not that there ought to be any hardship about that to the true soldier. He fights for his King! That is enough for him!”
A curious softening of expression came over the fierce old face as he spoke the last sentence. The young people both noticed it, and dimly suspected a deeper meaning to the words, but they were in no mood for moralising.
“I should prefer the honour and glory,” Jill declared boldly. “I’d hate to be sent to fight savages in pokey out-of-the-way places where nobody was watching and saying, ‘England expects!’ I could be most terrifically brave, if I knew it would be in the papers in the morning, and I should be a hero when I got home; but I’d be scared to death up among great lonely mountains with the feeling that nobody cared. Were you ever frightened, General Digby?”
“Soldiers are never frightened. You are only a girl,” interrupted Jack indignantly, but his host did not agree with his conclusions.
“She may be a girl, but she knows what she is talking about. She understands, because she is a girl, perhaps. Women have that faculty born in them. Banners and flags, and bands playing patriotic airs, and the feeling that the world is watching, have an inspiring effect on the most timid of men. Who told you that a soldier was never afraid, young sir? Whoever it was did not know what he was talking about. Yes, I have been afraid, deadly afraid, many times over, and no man dared to call Terence Digby a coward. To camp with a handful of men among the great lonely mountains, as your sister so aptly puts it, never knowing when or how the attack may fall—an attack of devils rather than men; to know that if you are taken torture will be your portion, not death,—there is nothing to dread in dying for one’s country,—that shakes the nerves of the strongest man! I hear people talking about modern warfare, and saying it is the hardest trial of bravery to fight an unseen foe three or four miles away. Well, well! I wonder if they have ever seen a rush of one of those warlike hill-tribes, and stood waiting to receive it as I have had to do times and again!”